Home Number 5

Along the years I've had many homes around Europe, but four of them I still consider as a home to go back to long after moving away: Turku (obviously), Brighton, Aberdeen and Bratislava. So, how can someone who has moved abroad multiple times always forget how expensive it is?! Well, here I am in my awesome new home counting whether I can afford to eat at all for the next three weeks or should I just not buy a vacuum cleaner and live surrounded by dust and stuff... 

Even if I have to go on a hard core fast I have to say I'm bloody happy to have this flat! Before I've always stayed in furnished flats because I didn't plan to stay long. But usually in furnished rental flats the furniture is far from nice, so this time I opted for an empty flat so that I could see whether I have any taste for home decor at all. 

People tend to spend a lot of time figuring out the furniture in their new apartment one piece at a time. I had a week to figure out the decor in my new place AND get all furniture. Thankfully I am not the sort of person who takes ages in making a decision on something. Our furniture shopping trip was probably the most efficient in human history! In Bratislava they had a lot of restaurants with "Ikea-free" signs on their doors. My flat would never qualify for such a sticker :D There's not one Ikea in the whole Estonia so I had to get everything to Tallinn at once. Once again a huge shout out to my parents for all the help with delivery and assembling! 

The one thing I didn't need to buy was a couch. So I decided to start planning according to it. Thank goodness for Pinterest because I really had no idea what would look good with a white couch! I found three nice ideas from Pinterest and I had everything clear. I left my money in Ikea and my parents stayed with me for the first night in Tallinn so that we got everything assembled and moved to their places. Problem was my bed was missing a little piece: the entire base! So the mattress just fell through the frame... Useless. I was soooo pissed off because this was a part that we had been informed to go ask for from the warehouse people. They gave us something else instead. Now I sleep on the floor next to the empty bed frame. I guess it's still a cheap price to pay for the fact that everything else went so well! 

I do like my flat to be Scandinavia-inspired with bright, simple colours and shapes. But this is me, and I can't stand a plain bright, clean, white surrounding, I would feel like I'm in a hospital environment. So I spread some spots of colour here and there and, as ordered, placed the beautiful, super-chic leaving gift I got from my Slovak family on a prime spot in the living room.

I'm so excited for the flat that I didn't want to leave it all weekend. But on Saturday I forced myself to go for a walk to the Old Town and got an Estonian number on the way. I also got a glass of sparkly in a pub full of rowing, middle-aged Finnish couples... I pretended I was British. In any case, if we don't count the snow (which I would murder gladly if it was a person!) I think I'm going to like it here very much :)